Metaphor
I am going to continue my discussion of science and religion this month, but I am going to use a little more science. Recently there have been a number of very interesting scientific discoveries which will change the way we think about thinking. After a number of years of investigation and observation scientists now believe they understand the way humans think. And, the key to thinking is metaphor.
In case you don't remember your High School English lessons I'll tell you what a metaphor is. A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word for one idea or thing is used in place of another to suggest the "likeness" between them. What this research is telling us is everything we know we know it because we store the experience as a metaphor. This research will lead to a better understanding of how to teach new concepts by suggesting a metaphor for each new concept. It will also lead to a better understanding of how human culture uses metaphor to pass information from one generation to the next.
Before we go on, let me give a example of a basic metaphor. Fire is like hot and like bright. Hot and bright are sensory observations. We have a good idea of what these are from experience. Now we build the metaphor when we want to describe an electric light. An electric light is like fire and enclosed, or like fire and not so hot. A metaphor can be an extensive string of likes and not likes. But metaphors do not have to be logical, they often break down under scrutiny. We could have snow is like cold and like soft. Ice is like cold and like hard. We can also think of snow is like ice, but the contradiction of hard and soft does not bother us, unless we are Eskimo. Eskimos have several words for all the different types of snow. In their experience they have built an extensive collection of metaphors describing the different types of snow. Each metaphor is given a word as an index to recall that metaphor.
This research does not imply all metaphors are true. In fact, it helps us understand the difficulty in trying to teach a new concept which contradicts an old metaphor. Likewise, if a better metaphor comes along we will substitute it for the old one. For example, think of "hot". We usually associate it with an experience we had with hot. Perhaps touching something "hot". But we don't have to experience being burned to know what hot is because people often become hot and uncomfortable. As we have more and more experience with being hot we create a metaphor in our mind which suggests to us what hot is. The metaphor becomes hot is like experience #1 and experience #2 and experience #3 and experience #4 and ...One metaphor that persisted for thousands of years was: "the world is like a table." This incorrect idea arose out of everyday experience and a need to understand the bigger picture. People could understand the ground being flat, they could understand a table being flat on top. People could not understand how a world could go on forever, so they assumed there was an edge like a table has an edge. The world being a round sphere floating in space required a leap which could not be connected by metaphor.
The concept of metaphor can be used to explain how people's ideas of God and religion evolved through the layering of metaphor. This is why God is portrayed the way He is. Metaphors like God is like Father, God is like King, God is like power, God is like fire are combined to create an image of what God is like. Artists depict God based on these metaphors and people use these pictures in their metaphor for God.
Maybe you didn't catch the subtle change here, but in extension to the mind - metaphor connection I am suggesting the metaphor - culture connection. Because the mind contains a collection of metaphors in order to be aware, these packets of information are also the seeds of a culture. People can pass experiences to each other via the metaphor. People do not have to experience the same experience to know about another person's experience. For example, someone could walk on a burning coal and tell everyone about the pain. People who have been burned before will remember that experience as a metaphor to understand what has happened. People who have not been burned but have suffered pain will use a metaphor relating to their own pain in order to imagine what it would be like to be burned on their feet. Everyone will get the idea in some way and that way will be a metaphor to another experience.
So, the next time you believe you remember an experience, think about the metaphors you are using to store the information into your brain. If the metaphors are flawed, then the memory is flawed as well. For example, as a child many of us have had dramatic experiences which are stored as metaphor.
Imagine catching a "huge fish" one day when you are out fishing with your dad. Your dad proudly takes this fish to the taxidermist and has the fish preserved. The stuffed fish gets stuffed into the attic because your mom can not stand to see the dead fish. Time proceeds and your idea of a "huge fish" may become altered as you see your friends bring "huge fish" home from their excursions. Each time, you say to yourself 'Yea, that is a "huge fish," I caught myself a "huge fish."' One day, twenty years later, you see Johnny bring home a "huge fish" you imagine could compete with the "huge fish" you caught years ago. You remember the "huge fish" in the attic and you plan to bring it out to compare it to Johnny's. When you get to the attic you discover a stuffed fish, but it can't be your "huge fish," because your "huge fish" was "huge". This fish is just a "fish." When you read the name tag, you see that it was your fish, but you miss-remembered the size, so you just leave the fish in the attic.
Now imagine that your dad had never stuffed the fish. This is how metaphors can get you into trouble. Today, we have ways to record our lives that did not exist even one hundred years ago. We have audio recordings, video tapes and pictures which do not rely on metaphor. Before this century our accounts were based on writings which preserve metaphor. Before written history the oral tradition was susceptible to each persons individual metaphoric experience. Personal metaphors tend to taint the historic record.
So, until next month, remember Athens City Times is a refreshing new look on the old knowledge. So bookmark this page so you can come back every month.
Michael Forbush4-14-99
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